“What are you planning to do about the Thervings?” Lanius asked him. “That’s why you’re here, after all.”
“Can’t go fight ’em in their country, not the way things are,” Grus answered, and the king couldn’t disagree. “I can—I hope I can—pick generals who’re able to see past the end of their noses. And I can hold the city of Avornis, and King Dagipert knows I can, too. That means he can’t conquer the kingdom, no matter how much trouble he makes. It’s an edge for us.”
“Yes.” Lanius nodded. “You’re no fool, either.”
Grus only shrugged. “Like you said, I try not to be. If you don’t think I am, Your Majesty, I take that for a compliment. And now, if you’ll forgive me…” He bowed and left Lanius’ presence.
Before long, Queen Certhia came into Lanius’ room. “Well, you suggested him,” she said. “Now that he’s here, what do you think of him?”
“There’s more to him than meets the eye, isn’t there?” Lanius said after some thought.
“Yes, and I don’t know that I like it,” his mother answered. “He’s got a lot of his marines here inside the city of Avornis. They’re behaving most correctly, but they’re here, and that’s a worry.”
“Why?” Lanius said, and then, feeling the fool Grus had said he wasn’t, “Oh.” The walls of the capital could hold out Dagipert and the Thervings, yes. But they could also hold out anyone else who wanted—or needed—to get into the city of Avornis. That included soldiers who might need to come to the king’s rescue. “Can Lepturus do anything about it?”
Certhia shook her head. “I don’t think so. Grus’ men outnumber the royal guards. This is Grus’ city right now.” Her mouth tightened. “I didn’t intend for it to work out like that. He talks like a bumpkin, but he doesn’t act like one. That makes him more dangerous than I thought he was.”
“What are you going to do about it? What can you do about it?” Lanius asked.
His mother’s lips got even thinner and paler than they had been. “I don’t know, Son,” she said. “I don’t know that I can do anything, not when he has so many men here. Trying something and failing would be worse than not doing anything.”
“Yes, I think you’re right about that,” Lanius agreed. “Best you don’t try anything, then.”
“Best I don’t fail,” Queen Certhia said.
Grus drummed his fingers on the table in front of him. He glared across the table at his son. Ortalis glared back. That meant nothing. Ortalis always seemed to glare. Grus said, “Son, I don’t mind you bedding a serving girl. Boys do that, when they can. When I was your age, I got it wherever I could, too.”
“Then what are you bothering me for?” Ortalis asked sullenly.
“I’m bothering you because you had no business bruising her like that,” Grus snapped. “It wasn’t even that she said no, and you hurt her then. She said yes, and you hurt her just for the fun of it. Your fun, not hers.”
“So what?” Ortalis said. “She’s only a serving girl.”
“No. That’s not how it works,” Grus said. “For one thing, I got called here to protect Avornis from the Thervings. If you think I won’t protect Avornans from my own son if I have to, you’re wrong. And there’s something more. If you hurt your women, people start talking about you. They start laughing at you behind your back. They start doing the same about me, because I’m your father. Or they would. This is not going to happen again. Do you understand me?”
“She just wants money, the little whore. Give her some silver. That’ll shut her up,” Ortalis said.
“I’ve already given her some,” Grus said. “But she won’t keep quiet. She’ll say why she got it. People do things like that. They aren’t toys. You can’t put one here or move another one there and expect them to stay where you leave them. You can’t hurt them for the sport of it, either.”
He might have been speaking Chernagor for all the sense he made to Ortalis—he could see as much. His son’s eyes were opaque as jet, hard as glass. You do see people that way, don’t you? Grus thought sadly. As your toys, as your puppets. But they aren’t, and you’ll be sorry if you try to make them so.
“Are you done?” Ortalis asked at last.
“No.” Grus shook his head. “The next time you hurt a girl like that, I’ll hurt you worse. I promise you, I will. Do you believe me?”
Ortalis’ eyes weren’t opaque enough to hide fear. His father had the strength to check his viciousness. If Grus promised he’d suffer for doing something, he knew he might suffer. Looking away, he muttered, “I believe you.”
“Good. You’d better, because I mean it. Now get out of my sight,” Grus said.
Ortalis stormed from the room. Grus let out a long, sad sigh. Hard when I can’t trust my son at my back— gods-cursed hard. But he couldn’t, and he knew it. Ortalis could be more dangerous to him than King Dagipert ever dreamt of being. Grus drummed his fingers some more. What went wrong with him? He shrugged. He doubted he’d ever know.
After a moment, he shook his head. One of the things that had gone wrong with Ortalis was that Grus himself had done so little to raise him. How could I? he thought. I was keeping the Menteshe and the Thervings out of Avornis. That was true. He knew it was true. Also true was that the job had desperately needed doing. But still, had I been there more, would Ortalis have turned out better? Grus shrugged. He could think that likely, and he did, but he knew it wasn’t something he could be sure of.
Sosia’s fine, he reminded himself. But it wasn’t the same. Estrilda had always been there for their daughter. She’d been there for Ortalis, too, but that wasn’t quite the same, either. A mother and a grandfather couldn’t make up for a father who wasn’t there. Maybe Crex hadn’t tried enough to make Ortalis behave. On the other hand, maybe he’d tried too hard. Either way, he was with the gods now.
And how many people with you were with the gods now? Grus asked himself. The list seemed depressingly long. King Dagipert, perhaps some folk here in the palace, Count Corvus, Count Corax, the Avornan nobles who leaned their way, Prince Ulash and the other Menteshe lords down in the south, perhaps the Banished One behind the Menteshe… The Banished One, of course, wasn’t a person, or wasn’t merely a person.
As Kings of Avornis and others who’d held or longed for power in the kingdom for the past four hundred years had done, Grus thought, I wish I held the Scepter of Mercy. They would have to take me seriously then. He closed his eyes, to make the wish seem more real.
When he opened them again, his first thought was that someone had blown out the lamps in his chamber, leaving it in darkness. Fear slammed down a couple of heartbeats later, when he remembered it was the middle of the afternoon and no lamps were lit. Someone had stolen the light from the room—or rather, from his eyes—even so.
Small, soft, hungry noises came from the clotted darkness. Grus didn’t know what the creatures that made those noises were hungry for. He didn’t know, but he could guess. If they were hungry for anything but him, he would have been astonished. And what would be left of him once they’d fed? He didn’t want to think about that. No, he didn’t want to think about that at all.
As quietly as he could, he got to his feet. The small, soft noises were getting louder, as though whatever made them was getting closer. Grus blinked and blinked, however little it helped. But even though he couldn’t see the things making the noises, that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Oh, no. It didn’t mean anything of the sort.